1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a drive device which selectively and cyclically drives a group of three-terminal light emitting elements such as light emitting thyristors, a print head including the drive device, and an image forming apparatus such as an electrophotographic printer including the print head.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, as a drive device provided in an image forming apparatus such as an electrophotographic printer, the following configuration has been known for driving a light emitting thyristor array in which a large number of light emitting thyristors are arranged. The configuration includes a complementary MOS (hereinafter, referred to as “CMOS”) inverter having a CMOS transistor and includes a current limiting resistor. In this configuration, the CMOS inverter supplies drive current to the anode of the light emitting thyristor array via the current limiting resistor (for example, Japanese patent application publication No. 2001-287393). The current limiting resistor and the anode of the light emitting thyristor array are connected with each other through, for example, a connecting cable.